1. Technical Field
Example embodiments of the present invention relate in general to a method of receiving downlink data and a machine type communication device using the same, and more specifically, to a method of receiving downlink data that receives downlink Machine Type Communications (MTC) data by utilizing antenna switching technology, and an MTC device that uses the same.
2. Related Art
Machine Type Communications (MTC) or machine to machine communications denote a type of data communication that is associated with at least one entity for which human intervention is not necessarily needed. Services optimized for MTC are different from services optimized for human to human communications, and have different characteristics from those of existing user-centric mobile communications in that the services optimized for MTC are associated with characteristics such as a) a variety of market scenarios, b) data communications, c) lower costs and efforts, d) a significantly large number of potential terminals that communicate, e) up to a large range, and f) a significantly small amount of traffic for each terminal.
MTC may be exhibited in the form of various services, and as examples of representative application fields thereof, smart metering, tracking and tracing, remote maintenance and control e-Health, and the like may be given.
In regards to this, in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) which is a representative mobile communication standardization institution, MTC standardization for intelligence communications between human and machine and between machine and machine is in progress.
As an MTC-related representative issue that is presently considered in 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), the fact that an MTC device should be manufactured with low costs may be given, and based on this, radio frequency (RF) design and base bandwidth modem design, or the like are taken into account.
In order to design an MTC device with low costs, designing of the MTC device with a narrow bandwidth is representatively considered. A frequency band mainly mentioned is 1.4 MHz to 5 MHz, and setting of the frequency band may be affected by traffic characteristics of application fields where the MTC is applied.
Candidate technology which is most strongly considered when designing an MTC device with low costs and narrow bandwidth is to use a frequency band with a fixed narrow bandwidth for the MTC and a single reception RF transceiver. However, when the MTC device is implemented by the narrow bandwidth device, there is a serious problem in that frequency diversity gain and reception diversity gain are difficult to be acquired, resulting in a reduction in cell coverage. The reduction in cell coverage is a problem that may be generated in both uplink and downlink.
Therefore, there are demands for methods that can maintain the same cell coverage as those of at least existing LTE legacy terminals while implementing an MTC device using the narrow bandwidth.